Morrandir wrote:


I think it should begin with Presocratic philosophers. However, this is not a course of history of philosophy.



I hope to include something from both Plato and Aristotle, yes. I just don't have a good text on Aristotle at hand yet.



Note that my course will only include 10 times two hours of discussion. It is not a lecturing course, and thus can never achieve the same amount of information, nor is it meant to. It is called "practicum", where instead of getting into philosophy through books or lectures, we will get into the philosophical thought itself through discussion. The texts must be short, ten to twenty pages, so they can be read through in two hours. This reading is done outside the discussion, and in the two hours of dicussion we will discuss all the problems, questions and ideas that rise up from the texts.

It will be some 100-200 pages of text all in all, from the whole field of philosophy. It cannot be indepth in knowledge, and it is not meant to be indepth either. Its value lies in the discussion and in the sharing of ideas, hearing other viewpoints, reading the best that philosophy has to offer.



Why would it be, by the way? Our first-year majors can easily understand the basics of both Kant and Wittgenstein. It is not to say that they can be considered experts, but the basic ideas of both are easy enough to understand.



In these discussions I think all agree that it is good to know as much as one can. However, the problem is that there is not enough time to do that. It is about emphasis, and I assume Gassendi simply thinks that reading Hegel is a waste of time as long as you have something better to read.

When I compile those essays, I try to remember that I teach first-year students. They do not know what they want, for most part, nor have they had the chance to get deep into different philosophies (although they do know their basic assumptions, mostly). They will receive their share of facts and knowledge from other courses that are directed at that, but what I can give them with this small course is perspective. The one single most important lesson that I have learned is that every philosopher has more sense in it that it would seem at first. It is easy to brush off the basic ideas of philosophers, but when one reads even ten to twenty pages of his philosophy and understands what it says, one is immediately more respectful towards it. The least that I can do is to give a piece of text concerning, for example, phenomenology, and through that text and the ensuing discussion have the students understand that it does indeed have a point.

After all, you can refute someone's claims only after you have understood them.
~M~

Ladon wrote:
Perhaps Hume's argument about the question begging of induction spliced with some causation.